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Germanwings Jet Crashes in French Alps; At Least 67 Passengers Were German; Are Budget Airlines Safe?; No Thaw in U.S.-Israeli Relations; Stocks Pull Back. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired March 25, 2015 - 05:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[05:30:00]

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: An intense search to find the remains of those on board Germanwings 9525, the airbus crashing into the French Alps. Investigators examining the plane's cockpit voice recording to figure out what went so wrong. Live team coverage bringing you every angle of that story begins now.

Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans. It's 30 minutes exactly past the hour. This morning the cockpit voice recording black box has been recovered.

And investigators are trying to figure out what caused the crash of a Germanwings Airbus A320 that crashed right into the French Alps with 150 people on board. Everyone on the flight from Barcelona, Spain, to Dusseldorf, Germany, presumed dead including two babies.

The cause of the crash is a mystery this morning. Germanwings says the plane descended from its cruising altitude for 8 minutes before radar contact was lost, and the plane slammed into the mountain.

Now crews are struggling to recover bodies and wreckage from the snow- covered, high-mountain valley where this plane went down. Let's bring in CNN's Erin McLaughlin. She is at the recovery staging area about six miles from the crash site. Erin, what are you seeing this morning?

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Christine. Well, the field that you see behind me may look pretty empty right now, but over the past few hours, it has been a hive of activity, helicopters landing and then taking off again.

On board those helicopters, inspectors, police officers as well as specialist mountaineers. They're heading to the crash site, a site that has been described as being pretty grim. It's in a remote location, accessible primarily by air.

The terrain there described as difficult. Local officials say that when the plane impacted, it was pretty much obliterated, wreckage strewn over a wide area including human remains.

The German foreign minister flew over the crash site yesterday after which he said that it looked like a photo of horror and that is what officials are facing today, that very scene. They say it will take about a week for them to search that entire area.

Their priority, of course, is beginning to recover those bodies and repatriate them to their loved ones, deeply mourning, no doubt, their loss. They're also trying to answer so many questions as to how this possibly could have happened.

Now, this morning we heard from France's interior minister. He said that yesterday they did recover the flight cockpit voice recorder. He said, though, that that recorder was damaged but not beyond repair. They hope to have it fixed in the coming hours -- Christine.

ROMANS: All right, Erin, thank you for that. Erin is about six miles away from the crash site this morning. The passengers aboard Germanwings Flight 9525 came from all over Europe, a handful from South America, Asia and Australia. Nearly half of them, at least 67, were German.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, saying the crash has plunged Germany, France and Spain into deep mourning. Today, she will travel to the crash site, 16 students, two teachers on the flight were returning to the town of Haltern near Dusseldorf after a week at a foreign exchange program in Spain.

Now Haltern is in mourning. CNN's Rosie Tomkins joins us from Dusseldorf with the latest. Rosie, this town saw its young people and two teachers go for the educational experience, have a cultural exchange, and now they are so, so distraught today.

ROSIE TOMKINS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Christine. An absolute tragedy for the nation, of course, 67 people on board, but in particular for this town, Haltern, one of the first towns we know to have had victims on board, two teachers, 16 teenagers, all on this exchange program that you mentioned and the town is absolutely in shock.

The mayor has been appearing visibly emotional, talking about how it can be felt throughout town. Here at the airport this morning, the normal flight schedule has resumed a day after the crash. There's an atmosphere of calm in the terminal.

We've heard from the airport this morning that a condolence book will be laid out for people to sign, but other than that, flights resume. There were some cancellations yesterday when members of the crew from Germanwings, the airline involved, said that they were too shocked and saddened to fly, understandably.

But today it's just one cancellation and other than that, a normal schedule. And meanwhile, more and more names come out, not just of students here, but two opera singers also from the Dusseldorf region, who were returning from a series of performances in Barcelona coming home.

One of them, a female opera singer who was with her husband and baby on board, one of two babies we believe were on the flight and died. Slowly these details are emerging. Faces and names bringing to focus the personal tragedies amongst these horrifying numbers. And 67 German nationals is the current number, but the airline warns that number could change as more details emerge in the coming days -- Christine.

[05:35:02] ROMANS: All right, thank you, Rosie Tomkins for us in Dusseldorf this morning.

The king of Spain is canceling a state visit to France to return home this morning. The Germanwings flight originated in Barcelona, and a count of Spanish surnames suggest about 45 of those passengers may have been Spanish nationals. Still no official count from officials in Spain.

Mourning along with those families in Haltern, Germany, are the residents of the small Spanish town where the German exchange students attended that program. Hundreds gathering at a mass to remember their friends.

CNN's Karl Penhaul is there. And some of those Spanish students had just been in Germany on the first leg of that exchange.

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely, Christine. Those Spanish students had been in Germany three weeks ago, and this was the return leg. And so for the last week, 16 German students here in this town just north of Barcelona had been continuing to forge those friendships, very much a language and a cultural exchange.

And in the next few moments, some of those students, the parents, the teachers, will be taking part in a commemoration service inside the school here. That's likely to be a very simple and certainly very private affair so that people can begin to come to terms with the loss of friends, young friends, and friendships that had just only begun to flourish.

Back down in Barcelona, Lufthansa, the airline company, while they're going through the passenger lists to find out exactly what nationalities were on board, but it is a number of nationalities. We've already counted about eight or ten different nationalities that could have been on board. Why?

Because Barcelona is a very cosmopolitan city, it's a touristic center, so people go there for short stays, even weekends, even weekend breaks and longer stays. It is an area where Northern Europeans will head south for a little bit of winter sun as well.

But it's also an industrial and commercial center and of the Spaniards that were on board, perhaps as many as 40 Spaniards on board, we understand that some of those were businessmen who had been heading to Germany for trade fairs so certainly a cross-section of people, ages and generations on board that plane -- Christine.

ROMANS: And a reminder that the cross-section is made possible by sort of the budget travel. And in Europe, you were telling us it's really common to be able to just walk to an airport, get a last-minute flight for 33 to 149 euro and cross the continent. PENHAUL: Yes, absolutely. Nobody thinks twice about jumping on a budget airline. Just because it's low cost doesn't mean that it's poor quality. They kind of cut the frills. You might not get a drink on board. The legroom might be a little bit restricted as well.

But it is a very common form of transport. Previously perhaps it was just holidaymakers, vacationers that would use the low-cost flights, but now they've become so common that even businessmen will use those flights. They're certainly very convenient.

And when I was talking to travelers yesterday boarding later Germanwings flights back to Germany, they said, look, lightning is not going to strike twice on the same day. We're quite happy to board this flight, although, of course, our thoughts are with the passengers who were on that earlier flight and who lost their lives -- Christine.

ROMANS: All right, Karl Penhaul, thank you for that, Karl.

The weather in the French Alps expected to make the work of recovery crews even tougher. I want to bring in meteorologist, Pedram Javaheri, for the latest on that.

PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Hi, Christine. Yes, you know, this part of the world on Wednesday, the weather pattern as rough as it gets. Some fog, freezing rain, snowfall and you take a look at the terrain, near vertical flow.

This is about 60 to 70-degree slopes that the officials out there have to deal with when it comes to just literally having ice, perhaps some snow on there as we head into the afternoon hours of Wednesday.

Here's the track of the flight. Notice the thunderstorms as it approached the region where it made last point of contact there where actually well to the south. We know weather probably not a factor as the plane went down.

Impressive depiction from Barcelona, notice the vertical profile. The plane for 45 minutes, it makes an incline and gets up to cruising altitude of 38,000 feet. Within an 8-minute period, it comes down very quickly.

It's kind of a very steady decline in the altitude coming down over an eight-minute period and the crash point at 6,500 feet high. What's interesting about this region of the Alps and the crash zone is that's precisely where the rain and snow line will be on Wednesday.

So anywhere north of this, a lot of debris strewn about, snow showers possible south of it where organizers are in place, say between 4,000 to 5,000 feet, that's where we have rain in the forecast so all sorts of weather going to hamper the operations, the crash zone in this general region, about 6,500 feet high for Wednesday's operation -- Christine.

ROMANS: All right, Pedram, thank you for that.

A Lufthansa spokesperson says the airline will no longer use the number 9525 in its flights. That's the number of the Germanwings flight that crashed yesterday. Lufthansa is the parent company, of course, of Germanwings, all 150 people on board killed.

A lot of discussion about low-cost airlines and the proliferation of low-cost airlines, and we were just talking to Karl Penhaul about how in Europe, people don't think low cost means less safety.

I want to bring in CNN money correspondent, Alison Kosik. Budget airlines, are they safe?

[05:40:04] ALISON KOSIK, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: You know, keep in mind that these low-cost carriers are subject to the same safety standards as the big carriers. The experts at CNN money we talked to said yes, these low cost carriers are safe.

Budget airlines, of course, as Karl mentioned, they do wind up cutting corners but not on safety, they cut corners on convenience. So that means you'll get less legroom or you won't get beverage service or you'll be charged for your bags.

But experts say they do not skip when it comes to safety. They do pay their crews less, that's true, but that doesn't mean you're going to get unsafe pilot. Just possibly a less experienced pilot, although that was not the case in this crash.

And the planes themselves, they are well taken care of. You still see these, once again, these aircraft carriers having to follow these maintenance guidelines from the FAA.

ROMANS: So what does their track record look like?

KOSIK: So the track record in the U.S. is great. European discount carriers as well have strong safety records on par with the industry as a whole. Germanwings specifically has a very good reputation. It was launched by Lufthansa in 2002 to compete with Ryanair and EasyJet and Lufthansa has one of the best safety records in the world.

Now, the plane that crashed yesterday, the Airbus a320, is also one of the safest in the world. In fact, there are more than 6,200 of those aircraft in service at hundreds of airlines as we speak.

BERMAN: That's why they call it the workhorse of air travel. All right, thank you so much, Alison Kosik, for that.

Tension rising between Israel and the White House, President Obama, new criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid allegations of espionage, the very latest on the strained relationship next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:45:11]

ROMANS: President Obama giving up all hope for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian while he is still in office. The president says because of conflicting comments from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is no longer realistic to expect a two-state solution in the next several years.

And he had plenty to say about the eroding relationship between Israel and the United States. Here's CNN's senior White House correspondent, Jim Acosta.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Christine, no thaw in that chill in U.S./Israeli relations just yet. President Obama is still refusing to accept Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's explanation about his stance on Palestinian statehood, describing his relationship with Netanyahu as businesslike.

The president said there's nothing personal in their disagreement on two key issues, the Iran nuclear talks, and prospects for a Palestinian state.

At a news conference with the new president of Afghanistan, Mr. Obama dismissed Netanyahu's latest position in favor of a two-state solution with the Palestinians. Something the prime minister rejected just before his re-election. Here's what the president had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: He pointed out that he didn't say never, but that there would be a series of conditions in which a Palestinian state could potentially be created, but of course, the conditions were such that they would be impossible to meet any time soon.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Making matters worse is that "Wall Street Journal" report quoting U.S. officials complaining that Israel is spying on the Iranian nuclear talks and leaking details to Congress. When asked about that, the president tried to laugh it off, saying he doesn't talk about intelligence matters with reporters.

But lawmakers on Capitol Hill are throwing cold water on these allegations. And the Israelis, they're not amused, issuing a statement saying these allegations are utterly false. The state of Israel does not conduct espionage against the United States or Israel's other allies -- Christine.

ROMANS: All right, Jim Acosta, thanks for that.

Turning to Iraq now in the bloody battle for Tikrit, after standing on the sidelines for weeks, the United States is now assisting the Iraqis, providing aerial intelligence in their fight to retake the city of Tikrit from ISIS.

The request coming directly from the Iraqi government and could pave the way for U.S. airstrikes. Now, about 20,000 Iranian-backed Shiites have joined forces with Iraq to push ISIS out of Saddam Hussein's birthplace. Heavy resistance in recent weeks has stalled the campaign.

Happening now, search crews trying to find the remains of those on board that Germanwings Flight 9525. What caused that plane to crash? We're examining what could have been happening in the cockpit next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:51:28]

ROMANS: This morning investigators confront a mystery. What could have caused Germanwings Flight 9525 to descend from cruise altitude and fly straight into a mountain, no distress call, no reported weather issues? Was it mechanical failure? Was it pilot error? CNN's Tom Foreman runs down some of the possibilities in our virtual studio.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This descent was somewhat rapid but not so fast that anybody in the cabin would necessarily have noticed it until they were actually able to see the mountains right outside the windows.

And that sort of dispenses one of the theories about what happened, that it was a catastrophic failure in the air, that the tail fell off or a wing tore off. If that would have happened, the plane would have come down much more quickly in less controlled fashion.

The debris would have been scattered over a much wider area on the ground. So if that's not what happened, what are some other possibilities? Well, every analyst we've talked to about this has said look at the flight pattern of this plane.

It is a direct descent that seems very controlled, 400 to 500 miles an hour the whole time, a straight line, no sign of anything unusual happening. That, they say, would be consistent with the crew trying to simply get to a lower altitude and deal with some sort of problem.

But we still don't know what that problem would have been. And frankly, if they had this kind of control, why wouldn't they have veered away from the mountains and gone to some of the airports nearby that they might have been able to reach safely?

So that brings up one other possibility here. What if they just didn't know that they were crashing? This happens. Sometimes pilots have false readings from instrumentation. They don't know how fast their plane is traveling.

They don't know where it is in relationship to the ground, or they simply become so distracted by some other issue that they just lose what's called situational awareness. And by the time they would have realized they were in deep trouble, they had no time left to do anything about it.

ROMANS: All right, Tom Foreman, thank you for that, Tom.

Still missing in the fight for equality, where are the female business leaders? A big power move from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, but where are the rest of them? We get an EARLY START on your money next.

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[05:57:04]

ROMANS: All right, it's that time of the morning, time for an EARLY START on your money. I want to bring in CNN Money correspondent, Alison Kosik. Alison, what are futures doing this morning?

KOSIK: Futures aren't doing too much. We are seeing little bits of green right now before the bell. Yesterday stocks fell across the board. The Dow losing 104 point, the Nasdaq fell below 5,000. We saw stocks fall despite positive data coming out showing more momentum in the U.S. economy from climbing new home sales to rising inflation and manufacturing. It is good. We are seeing that other data in addition to jobs showing strength.

ROMANS: A very alarming CNN Money analysis this morning about just how women are at the very top of industry.

KOSIK: Yes, this is kind of a bummer to hear. According to CNN Money analysts, there are 24 female CEOs in the S&P 500. That's less than 5 percent, and only 14 percent of the top five leadership positions in the companies are held by women. So that means the pipeline for future leaders is very thin.

ROMANS: Yet the big news this morning, one of the most powerful women on Wall Street going to become one of the most powerful women in Silicon Valley. Tell us about it.

KOSIK: Yes, Ruth Porat is leaving Morgan Stanley after three decades there. She is going to be joining Google as its new chief financial officer, making her one of the most powerful women in tech. Porat gives up that title on Wall Street, an industry that has not yet had its first female CEO.

It's unbelievable even to say that. You know, it's just a small snapshot of that when I'm on Wall Street at the New York Stock Exchange. There are maybe a handful of women on the floor.

ROMANS: Right. Ruth Porat is known as being a cost cutter, budget conscious, righting the ship after the financial crisis, and Google is being known for being very spendthrift so we'll see how those people just clash. Thank you so much. Great to see you, Alison. Have a great day.

It's 58 minutes past the hour. This intense search to recover remains of those on board Germanwings Flight 9525 crashing into the French Alps 150 people on board. "NEW DAY" picks up the recovery part of that story right now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The crash site, a picture of horror.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have no idea what happened.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There was no mayday call. Why would the pilot continue to descend into the Alps?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All 150 souls on board presumed lost.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nobody could believe it, really. You don't want to understand it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've taken steps to insure that the negotiations remain private.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: U.S. officials complaining that Israel is spying on the Iranian nuclear talks and leaking details to Congress.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If they were sharing information, it wasn't on our side of the aisle.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So you will be getting Obamacare?

SEN. TED CRUZ (R), TEXAS: Yes, I'll get my insurance through my job.

BASH: That means are you going to take a government subsidy?

CRUZ: I believe we should follow the text of the law.

BASH: The law thaw want to repeal?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR, "NEW DAY": Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It's Wednesday, March 25th, 6:00 in the east. The horrible reality now revealed -- in the French Alps, helicopters back in the air searching for victims and what little is left of the plane.

Here's what's clear -- that Germanwings plane literally disintegrated on impact.

[06:00:03] But from there, the mystery only grows. Investigators still trying to figure out how it crashed mid-flight taking 150 lives with it.